The invention is herein described with particular reference to apparatus for use in teaching the basis and management of diabetes mellitus but is not limited to that use.
It is desirable for patients with diabetes, and their support relatives and friends, to learn information about their bodies in health as well as after diabetes is diagnosed with a view to their understanding:
(a) how to minimise or prevent the acute and long-term body damage caused by diabetes mellitus when poorly controlled; PA1 (b) how to treat and prevent complications of the treatment itself such as hypoglycemia; PA1 (c) how to identify internal and external risk factors in their lives which may contribute to problems of disease management. PA1 (a) a substantially linear blood stream representation means; PA1 (b) at least one organ representation means; PA1 (c) at least one cell representation means; PA1 (d) a plurality of sets of chemical or biochemical substance representation means,
Hitherto, diabetes education has been conducted by means of lecture or explanation assisted by reference to printed literature, slides, videos, charts and posters, sometimes assisted by use of white or blackboards and the like. It has also been practiced to refer to realistic and anatomically correct scale models of the body having removeable organs.
The prior art teaching aids suffer from a number of disadvantages. "Talk and chalk" methods and those referring to illustrative diagrams are not effective to convey dynamic interactions between various chemical and biochemical substances (including nutrients, hormones, metabolites, antigens, immunogens, microorganisms, parasites etc.) on the one hand and various organs or cells on the other. In addition, known teaching aids do not readily arrest attention, especially of children, for a sufficiently long span of time. Anatomically exact models suffer from the additional disadvantages that many individuals have little knowledge of their anatomy and find it difficult to relates to such complex models. Moreover, such models are of little assistance in explaining relevant biochemical and/or physiological processes or the function of the organs.
An object of the present invention is to provide a teaching aid which avoids or at least ameliorates the above discussed disadvantages of the prior art.